


The Monster In Her Lap Fell Asleep

by OodoriSummer



Series: Super Teens [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Gore, Child Abuse, Curses, Demons, Devils, Gen, Gore, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Major Original Character(s), Mild Gore, Minor Original Character(s), Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s), Original Character-centric, Original Fiction, Original Universe, POV Original Character, POV Original Female Character, Science Fiction, Superpowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:47:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24484567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OodoriSummer/pseuds/OodoriSummer
Summary: Hi~ Welcome! This is based off a universe that myself and a friend have built over almost seven years. All characters mentioned are mine.
Series: Super Teens [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1811173
Kudos: 1





	The Monster In Her Lap Fell Asleep

**Author's Note:**

> Hi~ Welcome! This is based off a universe that myself and a friend have built over almost seven years. All characters mentioned are mine.

It was the blood that woke her. When it reached her nose, a headache began to stir.

Vinnie's eyes slowly opened, only to see haze. Dry dust from the ground coated her tongue when she breathed in so she sat up quickly, but the ringing in her head only worsened. It couldn’t compare to the throbbing pain all over her body though; how long had she been lying there?

Looking around she saw scattered piles. Pungent copper stung the air from all directions, from all the piles, all which Vinnie couldn’t see clearly in her confusion and haze. She stood up anyway, careful to lift herself slowly and plant her feet to the ground.

Any recollection of what happened until now was just as much as a blur to her as was the numerous mounds. The damn piles. Just what the hell are they? She didn’t even know if it was blood she was smelling... Her legs were shaking when she tried to approach the closest one to her; but upon closer inspection Vinnie couldn’t identify it. Looking around, she saw the dust beginning to settle after what might’ve been hours of drifting in the air. Her memory was failing her, she can’t remember a thing. But if the heart-wracking dread in her chest couldn’t have possibly come from her memory loss, then what from?

Her gaze went to the piles once more, and she wouldn’t look away until her eyes finally focused on it. It hurt her head to do so, but she had all the time in the world. And when they did, the quivering dread in her exploded. The ground hit her before she realised how light her legs were.

Bodies.

Crushed, bloodied, dead bodies.

Not just crushed, torn too - into pieces and pieces that Vinnie wouldn’t be able to count with her fingers; all of them mangled in ways she couldn’t recognise. Body parts that belonged to one person were sprawled many metres away from them; blood painted the dirt, coagulated after sitting there for so long. Worst of all, she could recognise the faces that were somehow still intact.

It was a small town, after all. Everyone knew everyone just like a good friend, if not a next door neighbour. She felt the heat in her face as tears threatened to spill - seeing what was left of her dearest friends made her want to cry, but somehow she couldn’t. She couldn’t stop looking around her now that the piles were clear as day to her. Not only that, but the skeletons of what little buildings were left standing in her hometown became clear too - she could make the shape of the hair salon her cousin, who laid three feet away from her, built her life upon. Vinnie saw the ice cream shop, the grocer, the butcher, the jewelry shop, the park, the playground, her upbringing - gone.

The first memory flashed in her mind.

_Everyone was gathered in the auditorium - there were only 100 students at their highschool, so the tight bundle didn’t need to hear the principal’s news from a microphone, and yet they did. It was the small things that made the small town just a bit more extravagant and bearable. With senior graduation approaching, they assumed it had something to do with that; perhaps a final good luck for exams or a rundown on the ceremony before preparations could start._

_But the news they bore that day…. They wished they never heard it at all,_

_“_ _We…. We tell you with the heaviest heart….” the awful predicate and hesitation made everyone uneasy, where the anxiety that suddenly blanketed the room made the students anticipate the worst. Bad news don’t come through the town often, surprisingly, but Vinnie could never prepare herself for what she heard that day,_

_“David Aster was found dead in the woods last night…. He took... his life….” Their words were lost in the air. The principal’s breathing shuddered and with one step, they collapsed into a nearby chair. Unable to say anymore and sobbing with ceaseless intent, they knew they’ve heard enough._

_Vinnie turned to Hamish, whose lips hung open and eyes stood shiny and still in pure shock. David, Hamish and Vinnie had been close friends since they were small kids, so they knew his situation. David’s father became crippled some twenty years ago; he lost his super strength after a run with some terrible drug that college kids were selling. The university shut down that same year. Yet, he somehow still found love in his new town and married the jeweller's daughter, the woman who could talk to flowers. They bore a wonderful son, continued the local jewelry business and even started branching to other towns. Their business was successful and their family was happy. It sounded beautiful, didn’t it?_

_T_ _hat’s only what people heard. People thought it was just his aesthetic - for David to wear cute sweaters that went past his thighs with matching skinny jeans that made him fit the retro era the town bustled with, to show no skin and prefer to melt in the god-awful summer heat._

_David started covering himself at 13, the age everyone’s superpower starts to show. His father first beat him when he showed him the flower he grew out of the sink. Turns out, he inherited his grandfather’s power, which was an extension of his mother’s by far: agrokinesis, the manipulation and creation of plant life, “_

_David, you look tired, are you okay?” Hamish had asked. It was first period English when he reluctantly told them,_

_“_ _But wait! You got your power, shouldn’t he be excited?” Vinnie couldn’t fathom it either; it was only a few weeks ago when she started flying to school instead of biking,_

_“I guess he’s just a bit…. Jealous?”_

_I_ _t went on for five years, but David didn’t tell anyone else besides his closest friends. His Dad was a cripple, after all, he was allowed to be jealous of his one and only son having a decent superpower. That’s what the counsellor told him, “But that’s fucking stupid,” Vinnie veered, but David shrugged and they continued their science project. Luckily, his power still flourished when he was outside the house, but that’s because he started staying at Hamish and Vinnie’s more and more. He lost the comfort in his mother when she was buried; he was only 16 when her body finally became one with the flowers._

_The depression and anxiety that seeped his heart from the abuse was difficult for the trio, but they pulled through with it all and got even closer. Vinnie would sometimes have him hop on her back so she could take him to the stars, a sight that he adored despite his down-to-earth ability._

_Hamish’s family harboured David the most in his rough times, meaning he took the news hard. They were practically brothers, being the only children in their families. He had to go home early to process the news, and Vinnie couldn’t visit until 10pm later that day,_

_"Babe?” He felt her warmth before she even reached his bedroom. They started dating halfway through senior year after way too many years of flirting,_

_“_ _You two are so happy together,” were David’s last words before he waved at them goodbye. David went to his own house that night. Hamish wished he could turn back time and make him come home instead, to a loving family that would’ve given him that happiness his father never offered._

_Vinnie had that effect on Hamish - the warmth - like she lit up his world with a single spark, and although it would make him crazy and fall in love with her all over again, he was too numb to even hear her._

_They didn’t speak to each other after that one word. Instead, they laid in his bed together and cried, guilt gripping at their hearts like anxiety. They could’ve done something, said something, but instead their best friend acted out on an awful whim and killed himself._

That was two days ago.

Her feet hovered two feet off the ground as she began to look for more memories. Her body felt heavy yet her legs were too light, somehow making walking the hardest challenge in the world. The pain still throbbed in her head and over her body, which made the memory searching even more difficult, but she kept going.

Vinnie got used to the sight - blood, body, building, blood, body, building. She couldn’t even call it bodies, it was only piles of guts and skin. It stopped affecting her, becoming a familiar, reoccurring scene but she also hoped she’d never have to witness it again.

_I need to find Hamish._

Even she didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of that first - out of all the faces she could manage to see, she didn’t kindle a spark of hope that asked, _is that him?_ But at the same time, something in her mind made her understand why.

_A croaky whisper stirred her, “Vin? Are you awake?”_

_Her head hurt then too, from all of the crying she exhausted that night,_

_“Mhm?” and she was too tired to speak, but Hamish knew that, he could barely compose himself,_

_“Do you think… we could’ve…..” He couldn’t bring himself to finish, and Vinnie knew that too. After more than half a lifetime of friendship, half a year of romance, they didn’t need to find words to talk to each other. They just know._

_“Baby,” she hesitated, “I don’t think we could’ve.”_

_Hamish somehow got out of bed that day. They couldn’t eat, so they silently mourned their friend in the park, leaving the space in between them on the bench out of old habit. His body was being prepared but they couldn’t bring themselves to move, instead they sipped on soft drinks and stared into the distance, into the playground they never stopped playing at even after adolescence caught up to them._

That was gone too. The green bench was broken in two, and the swing set was crushed in a crater that sunk the whole playground. A lot of the structures were destroyed in weird ways - sunken, crushed, toppled, split. It was familiar to Vinnie, but she strangely didn’t feel surprised nor afraid.

A guttural roar broke her train of thought. It stood far away from her, way outside the town’s outskirts. She couldn’t control herself, the wind pelted her face in a matter of seconds.

_Hamish was angry. He began to feel it after he and Vinnie had been in the park long enough. He had no more tears left, so he marched over to David’s house as the sun began to kiss the forests over yonder. It’d been only weeks since he last came here; he had taken David there while his dad was at the shop so he could get a fresh set of clothes._

_David grew a lot of plants back at Hamish’s, but not enough to make people question their home lives. David’s own place looked pretty dead actually, but people owed it to the grief the two men endured when his mother died._

_His dad opened the door with deep, irritated lines drawn on his face. Hamish couldn’t even imagine how this guy had super strength in the first place - he was a sad and overweight poor excuse of a father, if you could even call him that. He had a bottle in his hand that annoyingly waved in front of Hamish’s face,_

_“The fuck you doing here?” he grumbled, clearly pissed drunk,_

_“You did this to David,” the teenager muttered. He had lost so much energy from the grieving that the sudden spurt of frustration that simmered in him surprised him, but he continued,_

_"You’re the one who-”_

_"That boy did this to himself!” the man interrupted, not giving two shits about his deceased-son’s friend._

_Of course you’d think that way, Hamish thought, you unforgivable piece of shit._

_Silence rang in his ears after that. Hamish only saw red, an uncontrollable red that flooded his vision and fed onto something deep inside of him. He had his moments of short temper, everyone knew that, and it had gotten worse in recent years…_

_If_ _only he knew of the curse._

_T_ _he screaming that filtered through the small town sent the people in a frenzy quicker than they could even realise. Blood did the sky rain as limbs and guts fell from the dark heavens of the early night. Before they knew it, people were being ripped apart by an unseen force; some were crushed by it, others were hit by objects controlled by it._

_They couldn’t even report the figure behind it - it killed them before they could remember its horrifying face. Vinnie could though, and it briefly hesitated before she felt the force throw her to the ground._

“So that’s what happened…” Vinnie hushed. She had slowed down to locate the roaring, which shook the air a few more times while the memories slowly came back to her. It was getting louder now. And although she hadn’t been there, she knew where she was going.

The forest David ended his life in.

A few minutes dozed by before she came to a stop. In the distance, sitting near a tree, was Hamish. Or, at least what there is of Hamish. He was panting. Slowly. The breathing was shaky. His entire figure was coated in blood, now dried after laying in the morning sun for hours. Clearly, he became familiar with the copper liquid.

Under the red, she saw black. Black claws protruded from his fingers, a feature he certainly didn’t have yesterday. The black continued onto his skin all the way to his forearms; it creeped up from his clawed feet to his knees too.

Hamish definitely didn’t have horns growing out of his head the other day, and they too were black and followed the shape of his head, flicking downwards at the back.

He sensed her - he snapped his head in her direction, and she saw the black cracks growing out of his eyes and onto his face. To others, it made him look angry and deadly, but through that and into his beautiful bronze eyes she saw the exhaustion. After more than half a lifetime of friendship, half a year of romance, they didn’t need to find words to talk to each other. They just know.

The figure didn’t come for her. He just sat there, breathing like he was crying even though no tears came out of his eyes. She felt the energy beaming off of him, and it should make her unsettled because it was disgusting, evil even, but Vinnie didn’t feel shocked, horrified or even relieved to find him. All she saw was her best friend - tortured, tired and broken, but he was there.

He followed her movement as she gracefully levitated to him and sat down at the tree, the trunk of it welcoming her back. When they looked at each other she could see the wounds on his arms and his face - claw marks, self infliction. The blood glittered in the sun and she knew it was fresh, for he wasn’t just exhausted, but afraid too. Hamish didn’t know what this was and it terrified him that he didn’t know.

But Vinnie just smiled, a warm one that made him sigh in sweet relief. She beckoned him to come with a pat on her thigh, and he complied. When he laid his head down, suddenly, the monster in him fell silent. She felt the horns slowly retract into his skull when she ran her fingers in his hair; so everything else must’ve been turning back too. Her eyelids fell not too long afterwards. She was tired too. The distant sound of heavy wheels grinding the dirt and grass didn’t even register with her as the two teens finally got some peaceful rest at their friend’s final standing ground.

* * *

_** Hamish Strongflo and Vinnie McDay were taken away to a facility where they were separated. Hamish, or 0618-HSTRO, became the first experiment where they conducted awfully inhumane tests to measure his physical, emotional and mental endurance for what became known as the Demon’s Curse. He became a super weapon who was sent to mercilessly kill, leaving Vinnie alone for most of the year in a new town the facility allowed them to live in. Meanwhile their town remained forgotten, the bloody bodies and buildings faded away while David Aster’s body met his mother’s in the earth. ** _

_** Six years later, Hamish would pass down his curse onto his and Vinnie’s daughter, Aria Strongflo. The tradition of demonic confusion and slaughter continued when Aria ran rampage at her research facility-campus, where they were training super teens to unlock a second superpower. Hamish’s facility took her in too and tried making her a superweapon. ** _


End file.
